1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to providing medical care and, in particular, to providing medical care to people onboard an aircraft. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for evaluating and managing medical events that occur onboard an aircraft during flight.
2. Background
During flight, any number of passengers, crew members, pilots, co-pilots, officers, or other persons may be onboard an aircraft. As one example, during the flight of a commercial aircraft, any number of passengers may be present onboard the aircraft, in addition to at least one pilot and at least one crew member. A possibility of a medical event occurring during the flight of an aircraft may increase with the number of people onboard the aircraft and may depend on the medical histories of these people. A medical event may include one or more people experiencing any number of symptoms.
Currently available measures for providing medical assistance to a person experiencing symptoms onboard an aircraft during flight include, for example, treating the person with a medical kit on the aircraft, turning an aircraft around and flying back to the departure point, diverting the aircraft to an alternate destination, or proceeding to the original destination depending on the distance to the original destination and the severity of the symptoms.
However, some currently available medical kits require that a trained emergency physician or other type of trained medical professional use these kits. Having a trained medical professional onboard the aircraft during flight may not always be feasible. Further, measures such as turning an aircraft around and flying back to the departure point or diverting the aircraft to an alternate destination may be expensive or problematic due to factors such as, for example, without limitation, fuel consumption. In some cases, these measures may take more time than desired to provide medical care to a person and may result in the medical condition of the person worsening.
Thus, it may be desirable to provide medical assistance onboard an aircraft, while reducing the expenses associated with managing medical emergencies onboard the aircraft. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that take into account at least some of the issues related to providing flight safety and managing medical events onboard aircraft, as well as other possible issues.